Not the Type
by M. Jade
Summary: Michaela Giles tells her story - sequel to "Mother May I?"


Not the Type

The Unexpected Series: Story Six

Summary: Michaela Giles tells her story   
Rating: PG   
If you have any comments or questions email me at _jaderozegirlyahoo.com_   
Disclaimers: I came, I wrote, I disclaim   
Distribution: Strange Brew, any others please ask for permission   
Notes: This story takes place in Michaela's future. It's approximately   
the summer of 2023   
More Notes: This is the sixth installment of the "Unexpected" series   
and follows "Mother, May I." I promise that more "Unexpected" is to come   
very soon :-)   
Dedication: Thanks so much to Suzette, beta goddess and critique   
master. Your many words of encouragement and ideas were greately appreciated.   
  


* * *

  


I have never claimed that my family life is anything approaching normal. No, the Giles family is not your typical all-American, next-door-neighbor type, and we by no means live in Anytown, USA. I was born and raised in Sunnydale, California, a small town known for it's friendliness and it's very own portal to Hell. Before you get all wiggy on me, look up the term Hellmouth in any decent occult dictionary and you'll find out that I'm right. There are portals to the nether region that also serve as a type of magnet for the various forces of darkness. Yep. Incubi, succubi, vampires, werewolves, and any other monster that comes to mind can probably be found within the city limits, preying upon the tasty residents of this city. That's where my father and mother come in. 

My father, Rupert Giles, was born in England to a family who where long time members of the so-called Watcher's Council. The Council is a group of men and women responsible for making sure that the Slayer, the one girl in her generation who has the strength to fight the evil and keep down the swell of their numbers, has all the training, information, and guidance available. In layman's terms, it's the Watcher's duty to ensure that the Slayer does hers, and my family has made it a family tradition. My father was assigned to the Slayer, Buffy Summers, in 1997, and moved to the States to take on his role as her Watcher. In that capacity, he took over as the librarian for Sunnydale High School to be near his Slayer and SHS was where Dad met Mom. 

My mother, Willow Rosenberg-Giles, was a sophomore at SHS when Buffy came to town. Mom quickly discovered Buffy and Dad's secret, and took it upon herself to help them in their calling. She and another student, her childhood friend Xander Harris, became the original Slayerettes to Buffy's Slayer. The group called Dad's library HQ and did their best to protect the world from any Hellmouth spawned apocalypses. The Council had never truly approved of any civilian involvement and Slayers and their Watchers were generally not allowed to have much in the way of friends, so the Council took a curious eye to the situation. My father was constantly under surveillance and Buffy's performance was under strict scrutiny, as was that of her friends. It was a very unusual situation for all, to say the least. 

As more baddies made their way to Sunnyhell, the Slayerettes added to their ranks. First came Angel, THE vampire with a soul, who fell madly in love with Buffy. The irony of a vampire/Slayer romance was not lost on anyone, least of all Buffy and Angel. Angel eventually lost his soul to Buffy in a moment of passion and turned to the dark side early in 1998. Angel wreaked a lot of havoc in his soulless state, and the worse was what he did to my father. Dad had been dating a fellow teacher and resident technopagen named Jenny Calendar at the time and she had been attempting to find a spell to restore Angel's soul. Unfortunately, she got too close and Angel killed Jenny before she could cast the spell. I don't think Dad has ever been the same since Jenny died. Dad was afraid to get too close to anyone in a romantic sense after losing Jenny and refused to for some time after she died. 

Meanwhile, Xander had his own wild love affair with the snobby Bitch Queen of Sunnydale High, Cordelia Chase, which nearly ended his friendship with Mom, mainly because Mom was a card-carrying member of the 'We Hate Cordelia Chase Club', but they settled their differences soon enough. At the same time, my mother found love with a lycanthropic guitarist (Yes, my mother dated a werewolf. Deal with it) named Oz. Angel got his soul back courtesy of my mother late that spring, but not before his actions included torturing my father and attempting to open a portal to Hell, which forced Buffy to send him there in the literal sense of the word or risk sending the world along with him. Yeah, I know, that one was kind of a no-brainer, even if majorly gut-wrenching. I'm thinking that "I'm glad I wasn't there" is a bit of an understatement. The whole Scooby Gang still angsts over that whole situation, and it's been a long time ago. Angel made his way back to the land of the living, or unliving in his case, by early 1999 and tried to resume his relationship with Buffy, but it was already doomed. 

After Buffy and the others graduated from SHS in May of 1999, he high-tailed it to LA to become a P.I. and most importantly, end things with Buffy before someone else was murdered. Hey, I may adore Angel, but that doesn't mean that I have to like Angelus. Well, around the same time Cordelia had this awful experience involving Xander and my mom illicitly kissing each other in some burned out factory. I still get the wiggins just to thinking about it. My Mom and Xander, together? Sorry, it just doesn't fit my mental image of them. Sometimes I wonder if that was made up just to weird me out, but then I get real and know better. Well, Cordelia ended up dumping Xander quicker than you can say, "busted" after the factory incident. She headed for LA after graduation to pursue an acting career and ended up as Angel's office assistant. Isn't it a small world? 

Buffy, Mom, and Oz , who had made up with my mother after the aforementioned factory incident, went off to college that fall as Xander pursued other career opportunities himself while he began to date an ex-demon named Anya Emerson who had spent her formative years avenging wrongs against scorned women by granting them wishes to assist them in getting back at their errant lovers. Anya actually originally came to Sunnydale to punish Xander for cheating on Cordelia and wound up falling for him. Yet another ironic twist here in the dale. Buffy herself found a new squeeze that year in a psych graduate student named Riley Finn and soon left the badness that was Angel behind for her Iowa born soldier boy. Yes, there was much angst involved, but the future for Buffy and Riley was much brighter than she could have hoped for. Mom was not so fortunate. 

That fall, Oz had a run in with a female werewolf named Veruca. It was not a pretty scene and Mom caught them in a terribly compromising situation. Before it was over, Mom ended up hurt and Veruca ended up dead. After that, Oz was so scared he'd hurt his precious Willow again that he left town and my Mom behind that November for parts unknown. It was some time before Mom heard from him again, but he eventually got in touch with her. He's now a highly successful studio musician in New York, and he and Mom now have a type of tentative friendship. You know, it's the whole 'you may be my ex, but it's not like I'd wish you'd die of syphilis' thing. Oz even played my bat-mitzvah, and it rocked, so go figure. 

At the same time Mom lost touch with Oz, Dad himself was trying to cope with joblessness. He had been fired, for lack of a better word, from his position as Buffy's Watcher her senior year, to be replaced by one Wesley Wyndham-Pryce, a man my father absolutely despised in the beginning, not to mention Buffy, her fellow Slayer Faith, and the Slayerettes. Faith, to everyone's horror, became clinically psychotic soon after that and Buffy gave up even trying to work with the Council by Graduation, so Wesley himself was out of a job by that May. 

Then, on the day of Graduation, the Mayor of Sunnydale went demon on everyone and the high school had to be destroyed in order to stop him before he ate the town out of people. With SHS in ruins, Dad lost his day job and the Scooby Gang lost its celebrated library. The next fall, the others began to hang around Dad's apartment and it soon became the unofficial meeting place of the Slayerettes, much to Dad's chagrin. Dad also took up jogging and got back into performing music to fill his time as he waited for the school to be rebuilt, which took until 2001. 

It was around this time that I came into the picture. Buffy was trying to deal with her new relationship with Riley, the Slayerettes were coming to terms with the presence of Angel's punk rock loving childe, Spike, as one of their own, and that's when it happened. My mom had cast a truth spell to settle a major spat between Buffy and Riley when everything went wrong. The spell went all kablooey, and everyone had to tell the truth for one day, which lead a big moment between my parents. After spending some time alone, they acknowledged some long hidden truths between each other and how deep their relationship truly had become over the years they had known each other. They may have appeared to be friends to everyone else, including themselves, but deep down they had taken a liking to each other. It was more than a liking, obviously. That's the night they fell in love. Corny, yes, but I can't help it if that's the truth. 

The next few months went quickly for everyone. My parents officially began to date soon after that night and the other Slayerettes very slowly adjusted to it. Xander was the hardest hit of them all. It really took him awhile to get used to the fact that my mom, his long time bestest bud, was seeing the tweed-loving Watcher, who was more than twice her age. By that fall, tough, all was well in the Scooby world, until my grandparents found out what my parents had been up to. Grandpa Ira hit the roof when he met Dad, and nearly considered disowning my mother on the spot. It was a harsh reaction, but it only got worse from there. It was just about that time that Mom found about she was pregnant with me and had to tell her father. He didn't talk to either of my parents for nearly a month after that. 

Grandpa Ira eventually came around after the combination of a long talk with Grandma Sheila and Mom, and a wedding announcement. My parents were married on New Year's of 2001 and I came the next June. Doting parents, grandparents, and friends almost immediately surrounded me. I was the first child of any of the Slayerettes, and they were determined to give me the best life they possibly could around the Hellmouth. I was the redheaded darling they all wanted to protect, so it was a good childhood for me, but it was hard on my parents. My mother had a difficult pregnancy and almost lost me at one point after a car accident caused by a rampaging chaos demon, but raising a little girl among vampires, witches, and werewolves can't be easy on anyone. I was also the one that they all tested their parenting skills on. I have to give my parents this, though; I turned out okay, all things considered. 

As I was growing up, some major things were going on that I had no idea about. When Buffy reached the age of twenty-five she went down in history as the first Slayer to accomplish that feat. What no one, not even the Council themselves, knew was that as a Slayer got past a certain age, her powers and reflexes begin to fade and eventually, they're lost all together. She simply gets too old for the job. If a Slayer can survive long enough, she can become just like any other young woman and is able live her life as if nothing had happened. Well, Buffy lived and so her powers gave out. By 2006, she had lost all her Slayerness and was replaced by some young thing from India. Buffy was the first Slayer to ever live long enough to do this, and no one was prepared for it, least of all Buffy herself. It took her a few months to get used to the concept of being normal, but she soon jumped right into her new life and got a great job as a police officer at the Sunnydale PD. She and Riley, who was by then a very promising clinical psychologist, were married in August of that year, and their son, Neil, followed the next July. 

Buffy may have been the first Slayer to retire, but she wasn't the last. Faith, after much rehabilitation with the help of Angel and some jail time served for crimes committed, went back into the Slaying gig in 2004, and once she learned of Buffy's retirement, she was determined to live long enough to do so herself. She was retired within a year after Buffy and went to work for Angel Investigations soon after. She still had a lot of healing and making up to do at that point, but Faith managed a full recovery and moved on with her life. One part of Faith's rehab was to make amends with those she had hurt the most during what she calls the dark years, including Angel, Buffy, the Slayerettes, and Wesley. She had such a good time making up with her former Watcher, in fact, that she married him in 2008, and don't even go into the Electra Complex thing with me. I've been there, done that. Cordelia herself married a buff young actor named Zachary Enright twelve years ago, and Zack is one of the hottest faces in Hollywood now, so it's sort of like retroactive stardom for her. Angel himself remains as aloof, broody, and cuddly as ever and none of us would have him any other way. 

In 2005, the gang at AI finally managed to save a long struggling lawyer from the evil clutches of the law firm of Wolfram and Heart and Lindsey McDonald now conducts all the legal business of the agency, although I still think he's sore about the hand he lost to Angel, but I don't think he'd admit it. Lindsey has a lovely wife named Kate and they round out the team at AI, which I took to calling the LA branch of the Scooby Gang. I met the LA team when I was thirteen, and Angel especially took a liking to me. I don't see them often, but Angel, Cordy, Wes, Lindsey, Kate, and Faith are my favorite pen pals. I look forward to all of Cordy's gossip and Wesley's periodic yet insightful updates. I'm truly the essential link between LA and Sunnydale now. I always know what's going on in both cities, and it has saved more than one of our asses on several occasions. Wesley tells me it's because of my cheeky wit and charm, but Angel says it's just because I'm too damn cute for my own good, a quality I seem to have gotten from my mother. The parental units don't really like it when I visit Angel and the others, but I have a blast when I around them. Is that so wrong?   
  
The other Scoobies stayed in Sunnydale to raise their own growing families. Anya and Xander married in 2003, much to the chagrin of everyone, and now have three kids, Kelsey, Kelly, and Morgan. Xander himself is now an English professor at UC Sunnydale and best selling author (of children's books no less) while Anya serves as his very able manager. Apparently, years of vengeance can build business savvy, so go figure. As for the Harris children, Kelly inherited his father's comedic talents while Morgan has her mother's sense of tact, or more appropriately, lack there of. Having two women in the house who are likely to say anything has been a chore for Xander and the twins, but they wouldn't have Morgan or Anya any other way. As for poor Kelsey, she's kind of stuck between her twin brother and younger sister, who get all the attention, but she's taken it well and has turned out to be a potentially fabulous writer. 

As we were growing up, all the kids, including Wesley and Faith's two boys, Cordy's little girl Eva, and Lindsey's son Jacob, all formed a little playgroup of sorts. They would all be over to our house on periodic weekends and for holidays, and I, being the oldest, was always stuck as the one in charge of the others. I was also the unofficial babysitter whenever one was needed. Of course, it would always be challenge to get them to mind me, but I was up to the task and by the time I was in high school, I even had Morgan whipped into shape, so it was all good. All of them have become like the younger brothers and sisters I don't have, and I adore them to death. Well, not literally, of course. 

When I was eleven years old, my parents were finally forced to tell me the truth about vampires. You'd think the sex talk would be the most difficult for a parent, but in Sunnydale, it's the vamp talk, by far. I was already aware that they existed by then, but I had no idea that my parents were involved. On that day, I learned about the Council and that my mother was a witch as well. I also had no idea that one of our "family friends" was a vamp himself. I hadn't seen Spike, or Uncle Will as I had known him then, in several years prior to that revelation, but he was around, still trying to find some precarious place in this world as a defanged vamp. Soon after, he was able to hang around the house again, and went straight to work on charming me. He's actually the one who told me all the classic Scooby stories, like Buffy's proficient use of a hand-held rocket launcher during a demon raid on the local multiplex, and the time when Xander thought a love spell would be the best Valentine Day's gift ever for Cordy. 

Spike is also credited for giving me the nickname that has stuck with me to this day: Mike. It positively drives my father crazy, he continually insists on calling me by my full name while everyone else has caught on to Mike. More than likely it was that little reaction that got Spike to keep on doing it. I have learned a lot from Spike, and he is still one of my favorite people to hang out with. Together, we've become the butt of several Scooby jokes as old Mike and Spike and good friends. We even have our own stories to tell the kiddies one day, but they're too embarrassing to get into right now. While Spike was busy telling me tons of humorous Slayerette anecdotes, Riley and Xander taught me how to use a stake and crossbow along with a few handy self defense maneuvers and my parents declared me fully ready for adolescence on the Hellmouth. 

By the time I reached high school, I thought I was prepared for anything, but I was wrong. My freshman year, I met Gabriella Velenti and we became quick friends. I enjoyed a normal relationship with her for nearly a year until Gabby was finally forced to reveal her secret. As if by predestination, I had befriended the Slayer. Gabby had just came into town to work the Hellmouth when I met her while her Watcher, Liam Jessup, became my History teacher. My parents liked to have fainted when they found out. Of course, it all worked for the best. Gabby adores Buffy, they have this really neat friendship now thanks to me, and Liam doesn't know what he would do without my father's help. Meanwhile, I took up my mother's favorite pastime and began to practice witchcraft when I was sixteen under Mom's tutelage. I'm actually getting pretty good at it, too. Mom thinks I'll be a bad ass Wicca like her some day. I am now officially known as the only second generation Slayerette. I know that Gabby will almost certainly die doing this, but I would not give up our friendship for anything. My mother especially knows what I'm going through, but she says it's all a part of life on the Hellmouth. 

I also inherited my father's love of music and I'm really trying to make it in the business. Dad began to teach me to play guitar when I was six, and I've been hooked ever since. When I was in high school, I joined a band called Vega as their bassist/lead vocalist, and we've become one of the best on the local club circuit. I show a certain degree of proficiency with technology as well, but I will never achieve the level of my mother. Not everyone can run their own computer company, can they? I have also learned to do a very convincing British accent after spending so much time around Dad, Liam, and Spike, and back when I was in high school I once fooled this new teacher into thinking I was a foreign exchange student. Gabby loves it. Her favorite part is that I know what all the Euro phrases Liam uses mean and I don't let him get away with anything. I can even do a mean Irish lit, thanks to Angel, but it annoys Dad to no end. He never did get that that's part of the fun. 

Grandpa Ira also has had quite an influence on me over the years. When I was younger, he insisted on taking me to temple with him and we really bonded. It really helped heal some of the bad blood between him and my parents. I'm truly his little Kayla, and I adore him. When I was six, he taught me Hebrew and it was our shining moment. I truly am proof that the old cliché about grandkids and melting hearts is true, so it's now much better for all involved. The one cause of disagreement my grandfather still has is that my father is actually six months older than he is. It's taken him a long time to get used to the idea of having my father for a son-in-law. When I was younger, I can vividly remember hearing comments about my "grandfather" while referring to Dad, and hearing people refer to him as Mom's father. My parents tried to hide the snide remarks from me the best that they could, spare me, but people can be very cruel at times, and I still felt the tension. I myself never really thought about it. All I knew was that they're my mom and dad, and that was it. The age difference has never meant a thing to me, but it does continue to creep out some people when they meet my parents. 

Not that I have any room to talk. My parents have no idea, but I am seeing someone myself that I'm sure they wouldn't approve of. Last month, I began to date my own long time crush, Neil Finn. What started out as an innocent kiss at a family gathering two years ago grew into something so weird and crazy we simply couldn't deny it after awhile. He's only sixteen, but Neil's more mature than most of the men my age. Sometimes even I forget how young he really is, then at others I have to marvel at how much of a difference even six years makes. We're so different from each other, yet together we just seem to fit perfectly. It only makes me appreciate my parent's relationship even more, now that I've gotten a taste of it. Neil was raised like me, to be prepared for the hardships and dangers that come with living in this town, and he's taken it seriously. He's sweet, charming, smart, and as devilishly handsome as his father. Gabby, Spike, and Liam have known what we're doing since the beginning and so do Xander and Anya, but only because they caught us smooching in line at the movie theatre about two weeks ago. 

Xander tells us that our parents are just scared that we'll be having "the sex", which I swear we aren't, and make some hasty mistake, but I know it's mainly about the age difference. I'm twenty-two for God's sake, and I just know that Buffy and Riley would not take a liking to their teenage son seeing someone my age, nor would my parents. They would be afraid that Neil and I are shacking up, but it's not like that. I mean, we both know that Neil is too young. I'm not stupid nor am I looking for incarceration so Neil and I have kept our relationship as tame as possible. Xander in particular doesn't think that it will last. It doesn't bother me at all. Neither Neil nor I have ever been the type to pay attention to other people's opinions, but not everyone will see it that way. They couldn't understand, and I for one can't blame them, but Neil truly has a piece of my heart and I can't exactly ask for it back, can I? 

I'm sure it will come out before it's all said and done. Neil and I can't keep up the charade forever, but we're not afraid to face it. We know we will some day. I honestly want to spend my life with Neil. I feel like some air-headed ditz when I say that, but I've known Neil since I was six years old and he's always been special to me. When we were younger, I was always protecting him from any of the mean older kids, Morgan in particular, who dared to tease him just because I didn't want to see him hurt. Even as I moved on to college and the new life it implied, I couldn't leave Neil behind. I still called and visited him when I could. I can't deny that Neil was one of the things that kept me grounded that first year. While others were facing their own self-interests, I kept my feet on the ground and I didn't lose my head in the college rush. My parents never understood how I did it, but it was because of my friendship with Neil. 

There will always be other horrors that we have yet to face, so I'm not about to waste my time wondering what other people will say about what I do. I am a Giles, and I have no doubt that the Council is watching me. I haven't heard from them yet, but I'm dreading the day I'll see one of those dark faces and be called. Neil tells me that it'll be okay, that he would follow me around the world if he had to, but I'm afraid of it. It's not my destiny I'm afraid of or dropping everything I'm doing to join them, I can deal with that, but what I do fear is leaving those I love behind. If I'm carted off to jolly old England, I'll probably be limited to short visits and phone calls to my parents and Grandfather, if any at all, and then there's Neil. If he's still in high school when it happens, what can he do? Who knows how long they can separate us. The word forever springs to mind. I'm not exactly hot on the idea of a long distance relationship, and I want nothing more that to make this thing with Neil work, but my future is uncertain, and I can't drag Neil along with me. I won't do that to him. 

I'm really terrified that one day Neil will wake up and see that he can do so much better than me. He's only sixteen, and how can anyone be expected to know what they want to do with their lives at that age. I know I didn't. I'm sure that I love him and that he's convinced that he loves me, but what if that doesn't last? It's simply the reality of being that young. I'm just dreading the day he'll wake up and leave me for the next best thing. Did Dad ever go through this when he was dating Mom? Don't I haven't lost any of the irony of the situation. I'm going through the same things my parents did, and I'm too chicken to tell them. One day, maybe I will. I can't specifically say that I'll wait until Neil's eighteen, we're caught together on a date, or the Council happens to darken my doorstep to tell my parents. I can only hope that this can wait long enough for Neil to finish school. I don't really see that happening, but a girl can dream can't she? So here I am, Michaela Catherine Giles, second generation Slayerette and fool in love. Not only have I managed to have a complicated family life, my love life is mucked up as well. Bloody hell. Where's something hard to hit when you need it?   
  
  


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